Authors vs angry minds

[Tigerstretch]

So, I got an anonymous comment on Literotica today, and to be honest, it's far from being the first one of that type. When you are an author, you produce content. And regularly, people hate you because of that.

This is fine. After 2 years of writing at a very constant pace, I got desensitized to hate. But now, I'm even starting to find it funny. I don't know if it's appropriate to laugh at a distressed person, but since it's anonymous, I suppose that grants me the right to entertain myself at his expense. It will also show the readers what authors have to deal with sometimes.

Here is the message I received today from an Anonymous person who was offended that I posted 33 chapters of Animal Café on Literotica over the past year.

Dude, why are you flooding the category with so many releases? There's absolutely no need to break a story up into about 150 chapters that are all obnoxiously short at around 4,000 words in length.

Other authors aren't being discovered because all your tiny chapters are taking up the space on the monthly hot list.

If you've written a 100k word story, break it up into three chapters or post the whole thing as a novel.

I get that you want the satisfaction of having 150 separate stories with a hot tag, but you're just milking it at the expense of everyone else.

Now, I want to break down the stupidity of this message... allow me... Please...

Flooded the fetish category? I posted 33 chapters over more than a year. The fetish category contains 21092 stories (i checked) ... 33 vs 21092 ... Flooded? So overwhelmingly flooded. Oh, and by the way, I don't decide when they are posted. Literotica does. I suppose he could take his hate to them then?

No need to create 150 chapters? Indeed... it's 33.
Of obnoxiously short 4000 words? I suppose most authors are obnoxious. I'm sorry. Oh! But chapter 31 was 21000 words... Darn, that must mean he doesn't know what he is talking about.

Other authors are not being discovered because my tiny chapters are listed in the monthly hot list? Aaaah! I get it. He is writing stories and is frustrated because mines are better rated. I'm sorry, I'm not voting on my own stories. Readers do. I promise, next time I'll ask my reader to hate my stories.

If I write a 100k stories, I have to break it up into 3 chapters. Ahan... that's exactly how it works. Sorry readers, you'll have to wait 6 months between each release of my stories so we can give back the spotlight to this anonymous individual. Yeah, that's totally how it works.

I want the satisfaction of having 150 separate stories with a hot tag? 33... it's 33 ... over a year and a half. And I do like hot tags because I'm not the one deciding to receive it. It's somewhat flattering.

Anyyyywayyyy... All that to say, some of those messages we receive as authors are more hilarious than disturbing. This is a perfect case of someone needing a hug. Instead of taking a breather and seeing the reality as it is, he sank into deep distress, unable to find a rational way to cope with it other than sending hate mail.

Look, it happens to the best of us. We all get irritated by something at one point or another. It's normal. So I really don't blame him for that, and I even empathize with his state of mind. It's probably not fun for him to experience such a distorted and negative perception of reality. But at the end of the day, if it happens to one of you. Just step back away from the computer and go for a walk. Or write your message, save it, then come back the next day and decide if you still want to send it.

There are other ways to deal with hate than hate.

That's what I believe.
TS

[jakbird]

While the criticism is exaggerated, I do agree with one of the premises.  A story should be posted as a contiguous volume, not a chapter at a time.  Whether it is 150 chapters or only 33 the premise remains the same; each chapter is posted as an individual story when in no sense do they stand alone.  Do we really need a throwback to the old 1800s newspaper serialization tricks to bolster subscriptions by publishing a novel one chapter at a time?

I write stories from 4K words to 100K words.  The novel length ones I haven't posted on Gromet because of the 32K size limit imposed by the content management system.  I have a few stories chopped up now on Gromet and I'm not happy with the results.  I'm not going to go that route for any more stories.  Where to post them?  I don't know, but whatever the venue they won't be broken up into bite size chunks.

The comment wasn't the most articulate, but not everyone is skilled with the written word.  The frustration expressed in it does deserve attention, rather than chasing a red herring trail by nitpicking on erroneous detail.  We don't buy books a chapter at a time; why post them that way?

[Tigerstretch]

The frustration expressed in it does deserve attention, rather than chasing a red herring trail by nitpicking on erroneous detail.  We don't buy books a chapter at a time; why post them that way?

Oh absolutely. Im not at all questioning the validity of the point here but the format utilized to convey the complain. Everybody is entitled to an opinion unless they bring it up in a disrespectful way like in the case above. I dont deserve to be insulted just because his opinion differ than mine. Thats the whole point of this post after its entertaining nature.

And to anser the question. The chapters were presented this way because of the demand. Many readers are asking for this format so they dont have to wait 6 months for a realease, forget the story and have to tackle 30000 words on top of their busy life. Additionally, the format was good for me as it allowed me to run multiple series at the time while keeping people engaged.

This is how I liked to write and many people appreciated the format. Not everybody wants to read this way, but no, I really dont believe that my work is placing a shadow over other authors work. What I do is a drop in the ocean. And, as stated above, and Teann can probably confirm, I never imposed publish dates and never argued with the way my stories were posted. Not here and not on literotica. I write, i dont do publishing.

But again, yes, absolutely, people are absolutely allowed to voice their opinions in a respectful way. What I experience is something many writters experience.

[loras pa6]

While the criticism is exaggerated, I do agree with one of the premises.  A story should be posted as a contiguous volume, not a chapter at a time.  Whether it is 150 chapters or only 33 the premise remains the same; each chapter is posted as an individual story when in no sense do they stand alone.  Do we really need a throwback to the old 1800s newspaper serialization tricks to bolster subscriptions by publishing a novel one chapter at a time?

I write stories from 4K words to 100K words.  The novel length ones I haven't posted on Gromet because of the 32K size limit imposed by the content management system.  I have a few stories chopped up now on Gromet and I'm not happy with the results.  I'm not going to go that route for any more stories.  Where to post them?  I don't know, but whatever the venue they won't be broken up into bite size chunks.

From my standpoint I must disagree, not that your opinion is wrong in anyway because it is your preference. I prefer chapter style writings because my reading time is limited by my other responsibilities. I can read one or two posted chapters and go about other pressing business.

Full novel length stories that I have to stop part way and have no good way to bookmark my place is far more irritating than waiting for the next chapter.

[JohnH]

I would rather read a story of many chapters, as reading a long story is like reading a novel. If you need a break you can mark your page put the book down and come back   when you feel ready to do so.

[teanndaorsa]

I should clarify, there's no specific upper size limit imposed by the technology on the Plaza (or if there is, it's ridiculously large). The stories are saved as plain HTML pages, and there's little additional markup on them. We don't use a CMS to file the stories (though I haven't ruled that out for the future). A quick search reveals this answer which suggests modern browsers probably start to struggle when the files are in the tens of MBs, but even at those sizes you're talking easily five million words. I think the guide length for a fiction novel is somewhere around 100K words, so you could easily publish a whole novel on a single web-page.

Do any sites actually do that though? Because navigating that, keeping your place between reading sessions, etc., seems like it would need some additional functionality to make it work in a browser.

Anyhoo, as I think Tigerstretch's critic shows, the real issue is that everyone has their own preferences, and you can't really satisfy everyone all at the same time. What is nuts to me though is the notion they have that their preference is so clearly "right" that they feel justified in haranguing other people for their perfectly valid choices. It's one thing to feel that your opinion is justified, it's another to decide that no other opinions could be correct and so the only possibility is that you're making those choices maliciously.

It also blindly overlooks the fact that you were, first and foremost, a creator of serialised fiction for your Patreon, who also then published it on Literotica. If you were writing it, as Jack has, as a novel first, and then deciding to split it up to "milk it", then that would be different. But you set out to write them in a serialised way from the start. It's a perfectly valid form, that leads to its own interesting sort of style. Armistead Maupin, Alexander McCall Smith, Alexandre Dumas have all done it incredibly well. It has a bunch of practical upsides for the author, as well as for the publisher, and for the reader. Does it suit every story? Absolutely not. But to pretend it is not a real form and that the only possible motivation for doing so is to pad your ego by chasing "Hot" tags simply shows ignorance.

I don't deny that sometimes I split stories for my own practicality (there's only so many words I can copy-edit a night, after all), and there is a bit of me that wants to keep the readers coming back regularly. I can definitely see the issues that would come from a plain web-page that grows beyond 20-30K words, but I'm not a slave to it. It's a guideline, not a limit.

And Jack: if you've long form stories you'd like to see up all in one go, all you have to do is say! You're an author whose work I barely have to touch prior to publishing, so the cost of your edits is only the time it takes me to read them and write up the story code list. If there's big stories you'd prefer as a single item, then let me know that too! It's easy to stitch them back together and update the index, and I'm sure the readers coming back to your work would be okay with the length. If there's chapter headings in there, I can make them hyperlinks, and then people can click on them to get a link to the chapter start that they can save for coming back to later. A little clunky, but was exactly how that HTML tag was supposed to work.

[loras pa6]

Do any sites actually do that though? Because navigating that, keeping your place between reading sessions, etc., seems like it would need some additional functionality to make it work in a browser.

Gagged Utopia would just tack updates to the bottom of the existing story with a 'date added' between the two most recent updates.